


E is for Elegant

by OtakuElf



Series: YADAA (Yet Another Dragon Age Alphabet) [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, NaNoWriMo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2707166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuElf/pseuds/OtakuElf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to Lunamoth116 for beta-ing!</p>
    </blockquote>





	E is for Elegant

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Lunamoth116 for beta-ing!

Life began very differently for me. When I first met Hawke, it was to help her out with a street kid she was trying to get healed up. Bruises all along the arm, a broken collar bone, at least that’s what Hawke said it was. The child did not speak. Not that I heard. Hawke told me she couldn’t heal her until the bone was set. I had some small experience with that. Not much, and not a skill I’d like to improve. If you learn a knack like that, then the next thing you know you’re up to your neck in people wanting free healing. I don’t work that way. Hawke paid me in kind for that, though. I was setting up in business, and she showed up the next day with her hulk of a brother and two enormous wooden tables. “Quick,” Hawke said in a hoarse whisper, “put a cloth on these!”

I did. No one ever noticed that they probably belonged to someone else. It helped. Bottles of potion were much less likely to fall off the tables than the two wooden boards I had set on crates to display my merchandise.

I’m not a mage. No one in our family has ever been one. Not that we would admit it if we were. Every citizen of Kirkwall knows what goes on in the Gallows. Even before Meredith, it had an evil reputation. I wouldn’t put a Carta thug in that place.

My mother taught me to use herbs in poultices, tisanes and ointments. As much as Kirkwall is surrounded by the wilds of the Wounded Coast and Sundermount, there are ingredients of all kinds for brews and things. When I was little, it was nothing for my father to take me out to hunt for roots, berries, and leaves or sometimes odd types of stones. Most plants can be used to the absolute end. Since we were from Lowtown we scraped and saved, were as careful with our money as could be. Useful skill, as I learned later on.

Mother did not do sales. She sold her bits and bottles of herbals to a man in Hightown. He paid her in coppers for items he sold for good gold. The quality love to spend money on lotions and vials of sweet smelling liquids to keep their skin soft. Not just the women, either. And not just the Orlesians and the Antivans. I helped her as soon as I was able. I loved the scents. Wonderful!

Early on, of course, the family called me “Ellee”. When I was old enough to help with the work that changed. It was always “Elegant” after that. Mother chose names for us to live up to. Names that would fit in with the quality. Names are important. It’s why I don’t suffer anyone to misuse mine.

At seven years of age, each of us were apprenticed. Mother and Father chose carefully. Not one of us went to any master with a bad reputation. The terms of the contracts specified that we were to return home for holidays and once a fortnight to visit our parents. I was sold to Madame Lancieu, who created cosmetics for her own shop in Hightown. 

Mother told me quite pointedly that I was to listen carefully to Madame’s speech. “Learn how to talk right, Elegant. Not just copying it, but in everyday speech. Learn manners by watching. Practice them until they are second nature. They will take you many places that your skill at crafting can not!”

Poor Mother. She hoped that Madame would take a liking to me, and bring me into a partnership in the shop. Truly, Madame did treat us well. We ate foods that were never available in Lowtown, some that I’d never even seen before. I waited until I’d seen her eat them before I tasted mine. Madame called me “fastidious”, but approved nonetheless of my manners at table..

You would think by her name that she would be Orlesian. She was from Kirkwall, readily enough - the Orlesian was generations back and there was no accent - of the nobility, but had fallen from her high estate due to poor management by one of her cousins. Although her attitude was pleasant and polite with all, there were those who visited her shop simply to patronize her. In the most appalling sense. Madame served them graciously, without so much as a tightening of her jaw. “Elegant,” she would tell me, “in all walks of life, one must be calm and composed. Do not let those who love you know when you are angry. More so, do not give those who do not love you the advantage of knowing what you think.”

Even so, there were those who were not allowed to remain in the shop unattended. And there were those, mostly men - Madame would never leave me alone with them. 

I have no frightening tales to tell of strange men causing me fright in the shop. Life was very ordinary. I learned every day from Madame, asked questions and improved myself. In time I saw through the little facades that each man and woman from Hightown had created. There were nobles who had no sense of style or taste. There were those who had very poor manners, but still held themselves above all others. There were those who had large sums of money, but did not have any skills that would serve them in case of the downturns of fate. Madame had seized opportunity. She’d invested what money she had when the vicissitudes of fortune caught at her. Her skills at house husbandry, she told me, had served her well.

Though she had no children, and no husband, Madame Lancieu enjoyed her life. She had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. We girls served tea for them, and in doing so learned how to host. Well, those of us who took advantage of what was offered learned. We outfitted ourselves for a better future. There were those who refused to grow, to change, or to use those skills that would take them outside of their Lowtown origins. They did not last long. 

Oh, they went to good positions in Lowtown. Madame was not cruel, and she was not a snob. For all that her customers were. But she had a keen eye for who would serve best in her shop. As I grew, she taught me how to dress for whatever station I was looking to attain. Good quality, not flash-in-the-pan styles.

I soon saw that I did not wish to be serving those in Hightown. I wanted to be one of them. Not a snob, of course, but someone who could enjoy the finer things. And I would never do that coming from a shop that allowed them to remember my face as a servant. And so, as soon as I finished my apprenticeship and journeyman training (a foolish thing to call it - I journeyed nowhere but the shop I had worked in for most of my life), I notified Madame of my choice. I wished to start my own shop in Lowtown. A contract was set between us that I would provide her with certain sundries that I was skilled in preparing.

Then I went home.

Starting a business is not as easy as it sounds to the uninformed. Not in Kirkwall, and I suspect not anywhere. I spent my capitol creating a stock of unguents, rubs, and creams, of teas and tisanes. I hired a spot in Lowtown to sell my wares. I paid the merchant fees required. And before I had even opened, I received a visit from the Coterie.

There was already a man working in the market area of Lowtown who sold potions. I was competition - they said so flat out. This man worked for them, and I was not going to be allowed to take any of their profits away. The man was Tranquil. Even if his potions had not been good, it was well known that Tranquil mages created the best items. This man, for all that he had once been a mage and a human being, now had no life, no function, beyond creating for his caretakers.

Why, you ask, was he not in the Gallows? His family were exceedingly powerful members of the Coterie. They’d obtained his release to come home and work for the family.

Why, you ask again, would they consider me competition? When I made cosmetics and light stomach soothers, and he dealt in medicaments? I asked the Coterie representative. No answer, but an offer. They would allow me a damp and musty room in a back alley to create my lotions, which they would then sell for me. I would receive a greatly reduced rate. 

I packed my bottles and jars back into the straw-filled baskets and took my leave. This was, you understand, three years before Hawke brought me the tables. I went home. The apartment near the Hanged Man was crowded. It was not mine. I wanted my own place. What options did I have?

Mother and Father sat down with me at the scrubbed oaken table. We drank a pot of Rivaini tea, then another, before my father asked, “Why don’t you learn potions? Learn how to make them, and wipe those sons-of-nugs off the face of the Lowtown Market?”

I am afraid that my mouth was hanging open. Most unattractively. Madame would never have allowed that. I closed it with a click. “Learn potion making?”

Mother was determinedly cheerful. “You already know the basics, Elegant. You could do this. Give the Coterie a black eye in the process!”

I was morose in response. “So long as I don’t get a black eye in the process.”

We talked for the rest of the night about known potioneers outside of the Circles. They were about. It was possible to find one. What would take some doing was talking the right one into taking me on and training me.

“I know.” Mother nodded her head sharply. “We’ll talk to Athenril. She has connections. We’ve done business with her before, and there’s a bit of trust built up.”

Athenril was a smuggler, an elf - not that her race was an issue - and my mother had sold her goods that never saw a revenue stamp in Orlais or Tevinter. She did have a potioneer. Not a potions master, you understand. He was a crippled old dwarf who lived in Darktown. At times he didn’t make much sense. When he was lucid he explained that lyrium was not something one wanted in the system. He’d gotten lyrium in his blood through working it into potions and runes. It…changed him. The lyrium madness made him difficult to work with. Athenril was thrilled to have an alternative. 

Gap was never a happy person to begin with. He used me as his hands, now that his were gnarled and twisted with the bone disease. He hit me once. Just once. It was with a switch across the back when I tried to show him a way to concentrate elfroot instead of using it dried and ground. I took the switch away from him, broke it over my knee, and handed it back. Stood there, too, until he took the two pieces from my hands.

“You will never hit me,” I told him. “And I will never hit you. Understood?”

The look on Gap’s tattooed face - he’d told me he was from the common folk, the Brands, in Orzammar, considered less than dwarven - gave me to understand that my point had been made. I had cut through the haze of the lyrium in his blood. He then asked me to show him what I had done, and had me explain why. That was the day I became less of a student and more of a partner.

Gap died a year later. I was left to be Athenril’s only potioneer. It was a weight, and an enormous one dropping on my shoulders. I told Athenril that from now on I would be a consultant, not a hireling. She was not happy. I pointed out that I was supplying her with at least twice the amounts of goods that Gap had produced. It was time that she started paying in some of the profits she’d gotten from my work. Firm, calm, and collected in the best of Madame Lancieu’s manner. Athenril gave way.

My life began to change. I took hold of the fortuities that came my way with well-tended hands. Suddenly, out of the clear sky, Madame Lancieu sent me an invitation to one of her little gatherings. It was pleasant to see her again. She approved of my manner and dress. It was enjoyable to spend time with upper middle class women. They were women who were outside of the circle of smugglers and Darktown dregs that Athenril employed. The experience encouraged me to seek out other such social opportunities. Madame Lancieu did not introduce me as a former shopgirl, but simply as “Elegant”. Invitations to social events began to arrive. 

Madame Lancieu took charge of the invitations, and so my Lowtown origins were never a topic of discussion or concern. The day that Lady de Launcet introduced me to Lord Gaumond I had no thought beyond the fun of putting one over on the Hightown snobs.

The Lord was older than I. He was older than my father, truth be told. He was a good dancer. He spoke to me as an equal, as a confident man to an attractive woman. Gaumond was widowed twice. At the next dance I found myself attended by a crowd of young men who could also dance well. They looked suspiciously like the lord who had claimed the first and last dances from me earlier. I was swept from my feet, respectfully, and brought ices and whatever Lady de Launcet was serving that night. They had so many questions. I cannot recall at all what music was played, what food was served. It was a whirlwind. 

It was when Gaumond claimed that last dance that he informed me of his intention to court me. Astonishing! I pointed out that he knew nothing of me, of my background at all. I told him not to be foolish. His sons, he told me, liked me very much, and had given their permission.

Incredible!

The courtship was old-fashioned in its manner, and more than modern in the swiftness with which it was accomplished. This while I was still working with Athenril as a consultant, and helping Hawke from time to time. A year later, and after a thorough disclosure of my background and method of making a living, Lord Gaumond was not discouraged in the least. I had learned that his fortune was old and deep. He had no need to marry for more wealth, nor to provide an heir. He had plenty of those, all bright young lads with a mischievous sense of humor. He could, as he told me in a close embrace, wed to suit himself. All that he desired was my consent. We married. To the delight of my parents, siblings, and Lord Gaumond’s sons. 

The world, indeed, is a place filled with the unexpected.


End file.
